painter, cartoonist, illustrator, stained-glass designer and businessman, was born at 18 South Street, Manchester Square, London, on 27 October 1850, elder child and only son of William Macleod, 'a Londoner, of Highland stock – one of the Macleods of Skye’, according to his second wife’s biography. His mother, Juliana Esner, was of Cornish origin. The family migrated to Victoria in search of gold; his little sister died on the voyage out in 1855 and his father died at Beechworth, Victoria, soon after their arrival. William and his mother moved to Sydney where she married James Anderson , an alcoholic portrait painter from Northern Ireland whom she had probably met at Beechworth. Anderson made young William’s childhood miserable with his drunken brutality and greed. Known as 'William Anderson’, Macleod began work at a Sydney photographic studio at the age of 12, also studying art at the Sydney Mechanics Institute (School of Arts) under Edmund Thomas . At fifteen, he was the chief prize-winner at the school and began to receive portrait commissions. As 'William Anderson junior’ he was commissioned by Mayor Charles Moore to paint a (vividly coloured) watercolour of the interior of the pavilion erected by the Corporation of Sydney for a ball and other celebrations in honour of the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh ( Empire 25 March 1868, cited Dart & Conor Macleod 3). He also designed transparencies for the Royal Visit. He also had several oil paintings exhibited in the window of Charles Furse’s shop, George Street, including one of a kangaroo hunt. At seventeen, he was earning enough to install himself and his mother in a new home. He lived with her until she died, aged 93.
Early work of the late 1860s-1870s included designing (and sometimes installing) stained glass windows made and fired by John Falconer in Sydney. Examples include the large windows flanking the altar in St Benedict’s Catholic Church, Broadway; windows at Burrogorang; 'The Prodigal Son’s Return’, done for the old Darlinghurst Gaol and now in the Long Bay penitentiary chapel (Rolfe, 51, 174, 213-219); 'The Baptism of the Saviour’ window, St John the Baptist’s Anglican Church, Queanbeyan; 'The Confession of the Divinity of Christ by St Thomas’ window at Molongolo. For the memorial window to Robert Campbell in the Anglican church at Duntroon (ACT) and the windows in the private chapel of Dr Jenkins at Nepean Towers (now the Redemptorist Monastery St Mary’s Towers, Douglas Park) he was awarded the Art Section of the Agricultural Society of NSW’s medal – see Freeman’s Journal . He also did the library windows at Douglas Park (Conor Macleod, 4).
At eighteen years of age he was appointed drawing master at Madame Dutruc’s Academy for Young Ladies; he also taught at other schools. His first newspaper illustration appeared in the Illustrated Sydney News in 1866. He continued to send it drawings, including Albury Railway Demonstration , published 7 July 1883, 13. In 1871 the first exhibition of the NSW Academy of Art opened in the Chamber of Commerce, Sydney Exchange; it included 3 paintings by Macleod, the largest being a coastal scene, Tranquillity (Conor Macleod, 4). With other students he founded the Artists and Amateurs’ Life Academy, a society for studying and practising art. In 1874 he exhibited two oils at the Victorian Academy, The Tryst (in the Macleod home at Dunvegan in 1931) and a portrait of J.H. Carse in his studio. Perhaps his most notable portrait of this time, states Conor Macleod (6) was one of Sir Edward Deas-Thomson, hung in the Academy of Art’s 1875 exhibition and later in the home of Sir Edward Grigg, grandson of the subject and Governor of Keyna Colony, British South Africa. He also painted portraits of W. Long, Worshipful Master of the Leinster Marine Lodge (in full Masonic regalia); W. F. Hinchy and Alexander Rethel, officials of the Manchester Unity Lodge of Oddfellows; the Rev. William Slatyer (which won a silver medal from the Art side of the Agricultural Society); Archbishop Polding (Sancta Sophia Women’s College, SU) – a subject also painted by his stepfather, now at St John’s College; Archbishop Vaughan (St John’s College, SU); Mr Thomas Hewitt, a Grafton pioneer; James Squire Farnell MLA; James Warden MLA; P.B. Walker,, Assistant Superintendent of Telegraphs; and Watkin Wynne. Some were shown with the Academy of Art, as were Mephistopheles (from the Second Act of “Faust”) shrinking before the sign of the Cross. He also did animal painting, including prize cattle and other pedigree stock for prominent pastoralists. Imperial Purple , a pedigree bull done for a Mr Woodhouse, received much publicity.
On 27 January 1873, aged 23, 'William Anderson’ married Emily Collins in St Mary’s Catholic Cathedral, Sydney. They had five children, two sons and three daughters. Emily died in May 1910. At this stage Macleod was still often signing his work 'W. McL. Anderson’. After his marriage, however, William obtained a copy of his birth certificate from London, discarded the 'Anderson’ and lower-cased the 'l’ in his legal surname. Although Conor Macleod (p.5) claimed that William’s first newspaper illustrations appeared in James and Edward Fairfax’s Sydney Mail and depicted the NSW Field Artillery camp at Macquarie Fields, he actually began working there in 1874 (confirmed by account books, Dart, 11). He did illustrations for the Town and Country Journal , including The Treatment of Smallpox Patients in Sydney , published 10 September 1881, 512, and The Landing of Captain Cook at Botany Bay , 16 December 1899 (see file for others). From about 1875 he had regular work drawing cartoons for Sydney Punch . (Dart says that in 1856, aged 15, he contributed 2 drawings on wood to Sydney Punch apparently initialled 'P’.) He also drew for Queensland Punch from 1878, e.g. Ginx’s Baby 1 April 1879, p.91 (Ross Woodrow Aborigines, racial types archive website – in file).
Labelled 'a distinguished portrait painter’, Macleod had work from the first issue of J.F. Archibald’s Sydney Bulletin (1880). He drew the Bulletin 's first political cartoon, an unsubtle attack on municipal corruption, Design for the New Sydney Corporation Seal , published on 13 March 1880 (ill. Conor Macleod 1v, facing p.17). Conor Macleod claims it was his first Bulletin cartoon, but he also appears to have done The Wantabadgery Bushrangers , published on 31 January 1880, a portrait of Nosey Bob the hangman, according to Stewart, 13 (not especially well-drawn). Although his earliest works were unsigned after March 1880 they were initialled 'W McL’, e.g. Vice-regal Sport 12 June 1880, 'Henry Ketten’, the first 'Poverty Point’ caricature, 29 May {1880?}. Some of his early Bulletin cartoons were after Wangenheim . Dart states that the earliest ones show the influence of Charles H. Bennett and Linley Sambourne of London Punch but that by early 1883 the US influence is obvious.
Macleod’s Bulletin cartoons include: Not Much of a Choice : 'New Guinea [between Germany and John Bull], “How Happy I could be with neither”’ 1885 (ill. Rolfe, 33); A Terrible Poser : 'The Sphynx: “Is patriotism a virtue in Englishmen, yet a crime in Soudanese?”’ 1885 (ill. Rolfe, 34); Better Got Through Soudanly [Sydney newspapers eating humble pie ladled out by knight in armour Bulletin ] 1885 (ill. Rolfe, 39); As It Is : 'N.S. Wales to John Bull: “Principle be dashed, Daddy, hit him again! I’ll help you!”“ (NLA neg. see file). Other undated examples are reproduced in Tanner’s CAB .
Macleod drew most of the Bulletin illustrations until Livingston Hopkins ('Hop’) arrived in May 1883. Then Macleod joined the staff of the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia (Moore ii, 113), although Dart notes a Bulletin cartoon by him published on 9 December 1883, 11. He was the first Australian artist appointed to work on the Picturesque Atlas and spent two years travelling around the country sketching. His speciality, however, was historic works, especially portraits, including 'primitive’ Aboriginal subjects like Truganini, nameless 'types’ and especially early European explorers such as Captain Cook (frontispiece portrait, landing at Kurnell, and proclaiming NSW a British possession after J. A. Gilfillan , the Endeavour on the reef; the entrance to the Endeavour River, with Mount Cook in the distance), Sir Joseph Banks etc. He drew Arthur Phillip and all NSW Governors following him down to Robinson; Viscount Sydney; La Perouse, De Bougainville and Baudin – and many others. (See Conor Macleod, '“Picturesque Atlas” Days’ chapter, 8-12, who notes that many originals are preserved in ML and at the AGSA). Finally, he became Chairman of Directors of the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia Company.
Although Macleod and Samuel Begg jointly owned a third share in the Bulletin in March 1880 it was later relinquished. In 1886, however, Macleod was persuaded by Archibald to return to the Bulletin as manager. He became the majority shareholder and managing director (appointed 1912, retired 1927). Although praised as 'prudent’ and 'fair’, he was not much liked by his staff. (Dorothy Hopkins, p.92, called him 'generally beloved’ but she was writing when he was still alive.) Francis Myers commented: 'He loves a crawler’. He installed his son Norman as manager of the Sydney Bulletin office in c.1915 (but Norman died c.1919 during the great influenza epidemic, as did one of his sisters). Later he made his other son, Ronald, manager of the Melbourne office. Most notoriously, he organised J.F. Archibald being committed to Callan Park Lunatic Asylum in February 1908 for which Archibald – understandably – never forgave him. Yet Macleod also published Joseph Furphy’s Such is Life fully realising that the Bulletin would make no money from it and he generously revised the Bulletin 's contract with Steele Rudd to allow the author to regain film and stage rights to On Our Selection .
Macleod lived in the city before moving to Waverley, then to Dunvegan in Mosman Bay from about 1903. Agnes Conor O’Brien, who wrote for the Bulletin from 1901 to 1911, became his second wife in the Church of the Sacred Heart, Pymble, on 10 April 1911. After they returned from a world tour honeymoon in 1912, Macleod was appointed managing director of the Bulletin (with Norman Macleod as manager).
At about this time he took up sculpture. A self-portrait bronze bust done for his wife was, she wrote in 1931, to be left to the Mitchell Library. He also continued to paint, chiefly as a hobby, although he entered for the Archibald Prize with a portrait of Hop (AGNSW) and one of Archibald (won by McInnes, whom he acknowledged as 'the best man’ (biog. 45). In 1931 Conor Macleod published the posthumous Macleod of “The Bulletin” , an inaccurate hagiography, which Rolfe says is best read in the ML copy with lively, malicious annotations and corrections by the Bulletin 's A.G. Stephens. As an artist, said Stephens, Macleod’s portraits from life 'preserve some of the flat and literal air of those colored enlargements by Chinese artists which you get in three months by depositing £5 at a Chinese vegetable shop in Lower George Street’. A list of all Macleod’s published cartoons, caricatures and papers is at ML A 2147-2148. His art collection is discussed in his wife’s biography (pp.42-43); the women artists included in it were Alice Norton and Ellis Rowan.
Listed as 'Mcleod Anderson’ at 212 Pitt Street in 1871 and at Pitt Street in 1873 ( Sands Directory , 1871, 1873). Listed as 'W. Anderson’, he exhibited at the Agricultural Society of NSW Metropolitan Intercolonial Exhibition of 1874 in the section called 'Fine Arts – Competitive – Exhibits from the NSW Academy of Art’, cat.44, an oil painting, Portrait of Mr Carse (the artist).
For the Garden Palace in 1879, 'Allegorical representations of Europe, Asia, Africa and America [were] Painted by Messrs Anivitti, Montague [sic] Scott, McLeod and Habbe ( Notes on the Sydney International Exhibition of 1879 , Government Printing Office, Sydney 1880).
- Writers:
- Kerr, Joan
- Date written:
- 1996
- Last updated:
- 2007
